God Therefore Is a Law Both To Himself, and To All Other Things Besides

About

We are two young Episcopalians training to serve the Anglican Communion with the discipline of theology. Robb Beck serves the diocese of Oregon, studies Historical and Systematic Theology, nearly began a PhD but is now in discernment and blogs at Sublunary Sublime. Tony Hunt serves the diocese of Minnesota, is an aspirant for Holy Orders, studied Greek and Latin at the University of Minnesota, blogs at Theophiliacs, hopes to specialize in historical theology, and his red hair is dyed.

Our plan is to blog initially only books I and V of Richard Hooker’s Of The Laws Of Ecclesiastical Polity but are open to doing more should we actually succeed in the initial task. The pace is purposely slow: The primary reason being that we already are quite busy and don’t want to overcommit, but the second is that we hope this more relaxed pace will give readers an opportunity to read and discuss alongside. We take it that Richard Hooker is a foundational thinker for understanding Anglican theology and polity and should be studied by anyone who would fancy themselves an Anglican theologian.

The only contemporary edition of the Laws is the wonderful but rather expensive Folger Library Edition. If anyone wants to buy them for us they are more than welcome. The Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought has an edition, but only of books I and VIII with the Preface, and so the book of primary importance, V, is not in this edition. Wipf & Stock has produced a two volume set which includes books I-V. There’s also an out of print edition by the Everyman’s Library. Finally, there’s the old classic Clarendon edition edited by John Keble — beautiful, but also well over 100 years old and rather fragile. Most will need to make use of the convenient online texts.

(Should it not prove too arduous, Tony is planning on translating all untranslated Greek and Latin, but don’t hold him to it. Nevertheless, all specific requests for translation will be taken seriously.)

The goal is to blog a single roman numeraled section per week, two at most. We will rotate who writes the post but comment threads are open and all discussion welcome. We hope also to bring Hooker into conversation with what limited contemporary thought we know. Robb has a particular interest in the relationship between the Nouvelle Théologie and Anglo-Catholic Social Theology and Tony in Rowan Williams, Graham Ward, and Sergii Bulgakov.